lake

During one of the flights, I took some time to lay out a training plan until my Head Race early October. I plan to do a three week mesocycle of threshold training, i.e. spending a lot of time in my hard workouts at 25-29spm. I am actually looking forward to this. After the sprint racing it is a big change, and it is a range of stroke rate where you can work on technique and boat efficiency a lot.

I also want to try out 9 day long microcycles. I have been used to do a weekly plan, but the 9 day cycle allows to balance workouts better. In each microcycle, I want to do two hard distance workouts and one interval workout with short rests. The rst is steady state, cross training and recovery. Regarding the hard distances, I plan to start at 10km and work systematically down to 6km. So it starts at the intensive endurance part of the spectrum and ends with threshold rowing.

So, at the end of a work week with business travel, I headed towards the lake for my first training after the Masters Worlds. Yay!

The task was a 10k but with our lake and traffic pattern, it would be an approximate 10k. Rokle to Sirka is a little over 3km and Sirka to Rokle is a little less than 3km. In the end I managed to do 9.5km.

Yes, it was hard work. My heart rate is high, but I blame that on the travel and not being fully recovered from Bled. In the first Rokle to Sirka segment, there was a heavier headwind and chop, which you can clearly see from the splits. I aimed at 24spm but didn’t have difficulties going above.

Rokle on top, Sirka on the bottom. I rowed Rokle-Sirka-Rokle-Sirka

Power wise, I was very happy to see me holding a power between 220 and 250 W constantly, and it felt OK. Checking my CP chart, I should be able to hold 225W without difficulty over 45 minutes OTW. My limit is around 250W, but that would be after a good taper. Not after a week with air travel, business dinners after an exhausting regatta.

Also, this row was done with two turns …

here are some of the metrics charts:

The second part, from Sirka to Rokle, was the best in my mind. This was in mild tailwind. At the end of the first section, the wind suddenly calmed down and after that the lake was very easy to row. I was rowing strong and had a tendency to go up in stroke rate. I had to actively push the stroke rate and power down, knowing that there was another 3k to go.

In terms of metrics, I need to decide if I keep using Work per Stroke or switch to stroke length and average force. I think I will stick to setting a Work per Stroke target range like I have done so far. My stroke length doesn’t vary too much, so WpS is essentially determined by average handle force, as is clear also from the charts above. Also, 600 is an easy number to remember, which is important when you do checks while you are working at heart rate above 180.

As I had Quiske running, I thought it interesting to average over the three sections.

Prygl is the nickname of the Brno reservoir. Today was the last training. Tomorrow we’ll load the trailer and on Tuesday morning, we’ll drive to Bled.

On the map, it looks like an easy drive. The familier route to Villach. Then turn left to the Karawanken tunnel, pop out of the tunnel on the Adriatic side of the Alps, a couple of hair pin turns, and we’re there.

Romana and I launched at 5pm in quite rough conditions. We decided to take shelter in the Gorge. In the Gorge, the water was flat but the wind was unpredictable. We did a 5 minute rate ladder, 3 minutes at 26spm, 1.5 minute at 30spm, 30 seconds at race pace, in mostly headwind conditions. We weren’t entirely happy. It’s a fine balance. Sometimes we get that light catch and we’re very close to flying. Sometimes, the timing is off just slightly, and it’s a slog. You don’t see it in the boat speed immediately, but the rowing is without a spark, it’s not playful, and it tires the body much faster than when the fire is on.

We turned around at the Castle, and on the way back we did a few start practices and short race pace pieces.

Then we crossed the lake in a fantastic strong tailwind, with very heavy chop. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Romana enjoyed it less, but she wasn’t as uncomfortable as usually. I just need to set the oarlocks a touch higher when there’s chop, on our double.

Oh, and I forgot to blog about what I did on Friday and Saturday. On Friday, I cycled to work, through the rain.

At work, I moderated a strategy workshop for the full day. Then I cycled home, through the rain.

On Saturday, the weather was slightly better. I took a lazy day and the only exercise I got was a short cycle tour with my son Robin. We rode into Brno, had a drink at the Selepka pub in the park, and then rode home.

On Saturday evening, we went to the movies, to see a new movie by Jan Sverak. The English title is “Barefoot on Stalks” and it is a great, slightly nostalgic, movie, telling the childhood memories of the director’s father, from occupied Czechoslovakia in WW II, seen from the perspective of a child. Here is the trailer.

A short training in the evening. When I made it to the rowing club after work, Romana had already rigged the boat and cleaned it after transport.

Going into the taper for Bled, I wanted this one to be an intensive but short training. I chose my beloved 45″/R75″ format. I personally think our boat moving skills are good, but Romana is unsure about some of the technique changes I have made. Due to rowing with the power meter and analyzing the metrics that the Oarlock has revealed, I have been making gradual changes in my technique, and the issue is that Romana hasn’t changed with them, as she was not rowing for a few weeks in June/July due to back issues.

After a 2k warming up with some 10 stroke bursts, we did 6 intervals. After the fourth one we had to do a quick turn because there was too much traffic ahead. Paddle boards, wind surfing, sail boats, and a pair from the other rowing club, who are also preparing for Bled. Actually, that ladies’ pair was rowing in the wrong direction, against the traffic pattern. I did point that out to them after we had completed our intervals. Told them a crash would have damaged two boats and ruined our plans for the World Masters Regatta.

After my “friendly” chat about the traffic pattern, we turned around and rowed a “500m” against the pair. Actually, we were leading by several boat lengths after about 400m when Romana had enough of constantly turning around to check the position of paddle boarders, pedalos, sailing boats, and wind surfers, and we continued to row slowly.

I had put the Quiske sensor on Romana’s scull. So here are some charts, from all the 45″ intervals as well as the 500m.

When I put the sensor on the scull, Romana joked that she hoped that I wouldn’t remove her from the selection based on her rowing data. Of course, I praised her great rowing style. (And I don’t think there is anything wrong with these curves.)

What is interesting is to compare the scull horizontal/vertical angles of a stroke between the single and the mixed double. I don’t realize it any more, but we do row a shorter stroke, as Romana is a bit shorter than I am. And here are the data:

I didn’t do my weekend homework – so I had to get to work early and do it in the morning. Visits from the US and I got to play my boss. It all went very well, except that the A/C broke down in our building and it was 28 degrees in the meeting room. We should have moved to the patio, where it was just 26 degrees.

So after a long day I waved goodbye to my guests and headed to the rowing club. I was going to do a 4x1km and tried to get some of the Masters crews to row it alongside me, but nobody fancied this training. I don’t blame them. It is quite hard. But I am doing a mini cycle with threshold training and intensive distance, hoping it will move my anaerobic threshold a bit, which should help me at the Masters Worlds, if I manage to convert that to boat speed.

That’s the theory. Besides that, the 4x1km is just a hell of a session. The big advantage of rowing with a power meter is that you can take the average power of the last time as a target, and then try to improve. There is still a weather influence. It will be harder in choppy conditions, but it is still a lot more quantitative than trying to row to feel or a target pace.

I was tired and worried that I would have low grit to complete the session, but everything turned out better than expected. The target power was a bit lower than the first three intervals of last week (because the overall average was lowered by a dramatically slow fourth interval), so it was tough but doable, and I was able to focus on technique as well.

A slight additional difficulty was the fact that the place I chose to row the workout brought me in near collision course with big tourist boats on all intervals except the first one. In the second interval I managed to cross in front. In third and fourth interval I had to row through the wake. That explains short drops in power.

Interesting that my heart rate graph shows more red in the third interval. The fourth one was definitely a harder one.

I set average pace on the lower right of my SpeedCoach and rowed this like an ergo training. Static start. Off you go, a few start strokes, then drop the pace immediately. Row slightly under the target until the average power hits target, then keep holding target power.

Here are the metrics charts. I include all of my regular ones this time. You can click on one of them to see a bigger version and then browse through the image gallery. The point I am trying to make is that it looks like pretty consistent rowing.

I am still fascinated by the trend flex charts. Here is this row, pace vs power, split by stroke rate:For comparison, here is the power/pace behavior with every individual workout stroke:

Most of those high stroke rate strokes are from the final 250m in the final interval:

Those 250m really really hurt. I think I haven’t been that deep in the pain box in training, recently. Again, that is the power of training with a power meter. Having a target and wanting to improve is what really kept me going.

I improved by 1 Watt. One tiny Watt. In terms of energy expended, that is 1/200th of an Apple. The progress is that the way I rowed it, it felt easier.

At the end of the working day, I decided to take the train. I could have cycled and get in 45 minutes of training, but I also wanted to read a few documents. The train ride would be a great opportunity to do that (I am very bad at reading work documents at home). The train broke down between two stations, in 30 degrees C. After 10 minutes, I left the train, walked to the closest bus station, took the city bus. Trip home took 75 minutes. I did my reading.

Romana had been rowing with her double partner Veronika, who is over from Ostrava. Veronika was staying over at our house for another session in the morning. We discussed training volumes. The Ostrava people are volume junkies. Here is my volume from Stravistix.

I am doing pretty well compared to 2013, ’14 and ’15. I think that volume wise the year is going to be very similar to 2016. I do not have time to do the volumes that the Ostrava guys are doing, but I might be able to make my program a bit more robust against events that threaten volume. Business trips. Low energy. The likes.

The Stravistix tool also lets you look at elevation climbed. This year, I seem to be a climber. I think it’s biking with my kids.

It is not, actually. I browsed through the different sports on Stravistix, and it is rowing. I am a rowing climber! I guess it has to do with elevation correction being changed on Strava.

Thursday

This morning I joined the girls for a row on the lake. They went out in the double, delighted to see an empty lake. (I am already used to it and enjoy rowing in the morning).

The wind was getting stronger during the row. I pushed off a bit earlier than the girls in the double, and I was about 500m out when they pushed off. I decided to row the long version of the “tour du lac”, going into the turn at the Rokle end, instead of turning the boat at the beginning of the turn. I thought that that would allow them to gradually catch up, but it didn’t happen, because the girls did start practice.

After 12km, I chose to row up the lake again, expecting to meet the double half way and then row back to the dock together. I didn’t find them. So I completed another loop and returned to the club. The double was already in. I think I missed them when they were rowing in the reflection of the sunlight on the water. Anyway, you can see how I rowed slower in that final loop, scanning the lake for a double.

During the bulk of the row, I threw in a few rate ladders, the 4min/3min/2min/1min type at 18/20/22/24 spm. All well.

I tried to see if reducing work per stroke at constant stroke rate would slow me down or reduce the distance per stroke. I have the feeling it doesn’t, but the data may be skewed by changing wind strength.

The jury is still out.

Now I am on a long phone conference with my colleagues from Phoenix. Listening mode. After that, around 7:30pm, I will start the cycle ride home (45 minutes).

My entire flotilla was on the water. Romana and her doubles partner Veronika were out in our double “Orca” and I took my single “Dolfijn”.

Just 14 km of steady state, rowing back and forth alongside (in front of) the double. Veronika, who is from Ostrava and used to a quiet river, was very stressed by the traffic on the lake. In her own words: “If something floats in our river, it’s dead.”

I guess I have developed quite some nonchalance managing the lake traffic. I take calculated risks and go close. The risk is having to do a dead stop, but most of the time everything is fine. Perhaps my Dutch cycling skills come into play here:

This is how we cycle, where I grew up. I don’t see anything abnormal, but I understand from the circles, that there is something interesting going on.

Back to rowing, I was also rowing low Work per Stroke on purpose, and I was not slow.

A quick look at some metrics:

And here is the interesting chart. I am looking at data for the steady state workouts of Tuesday and Wednesday.

And here is the really interesting chart. I took pace vs power (my go-to efficiency chart currently) and looked at average data grouped by work per stroke. The data are from this week’s steady state workouts. On Tuesday I was rowing in the 550-600J range. On Thursday, I was in the 475-550J range:

You see how the boat speed stagnates between 180 and 200W of power? I was just more efficient on Thursday. Getting the same average boat speed at lower power.

According to the weather report there was a slightly stronger wind on Tuesday. According to my own observations, the wind was stronger on Thursday. But light wind in both cases. The wind direction was different, but that should average out over the outing.

I don’t take it as hard evidence but I do take it as an encouragement to keep experimenting with lightening up the stroke.

The planned session was the Pete Plan Pyramid: 250m/500m/750m/1000m/750m/500m/250m intervals. Rest: Paddle the distance that you have just rowed.

It didn’t matter that it was 35 degrees C in the shadow.

It didn’t matter that this was my first working day after the vacation. I tell you, spending the entire day in an airconditioned office, and then going out into the heat, it’s worse than just spending the day outdoors.

The Brno reservoir, on days like these, turns into a giant outdoor swimming pool, especially after work. Unfortunately, I couldn’t go out in the morning.

Half of the adults are not sober. Some have jumped off their vessel and are trying to climb back into it (which takes a long time after a few drinks). One third of the captains are checking their phones, or have their headphones on. Some are doing Yoga on paddle boards in the middle of our traffic pattern. Our lake is basically, a hot, simmering soup. Steaming. Hot. Liquid. Pieces of meat floating around.

I have made a short video to illustrate the sounds I hear during rowing. Please play it so you can imagine the atmosphere. The photos are taken after the row. During the row, the sun was higher, and stronger. You have to imagine the smell of grilled sausage yourself as I didn’t find a way to transmit that through this blog.

A cox’n: “I s2g I’ve yelled more at kayaks and SUPs than I have at bow 4 combined.”

“They’re basically the one bad thing about my home water. Austin is hipster central, and doing yoga with your dog on a standup paddleboard might be great for instagram, but it sucks for us having to check it down 70% of the way through a race piece.”

“Treat them as you might a toddler.”

“Because most of them are rank amateurs that haven’t even been properly trained on water etiquette before being released into the world. People will literally rent them the boats and be like do whatever idgaf not my responsibility.
In general “amateur athletes” in sports like kayaking or downhill skiing are a danger to themselves and others. They don’t properly understand the risks, think it looks easy and forgo getting trained or get trained by the cheapest, shittiest trainer, and often don’t even realize that there is an actual chance you can die doing this activity. People don’t realize how dangerous sports can be.”

“If rowing takes place on the same waterway as any other human-powered watercraft (or even slower motorcraft), and the non-rowing boat is in front of the rowers, you end up with a slow boat in front of a fast boat with neither crew having eyes on the other. Add to that that human powered craft are pretty quiet and that the rowing shell can’t turn nimbly; it’s exceptionally easy for a collision to happen.”

OK, enough. I usually try to be very nice, hoping that they will not develop a disliking of rowers and might consider the sport for their kids. But I also go slightly into the “treat them as you might a toddler” direction.

Anyway, you can imagine that turning around to check regularly if one of the five slow boats in front of me hasn’t decided to change course without checking if something fast is coming up from behind is not speeding me up.

Rowing away from the dock, I noticed that the SpeedCoach battery indication was at 0%. That wasn’t helpful. On Saturday, it was still on 60%, and I had forgotten to charge it, thinking that being switched off it wouldn’t discharge so fast. To make things worse, I had forgotten my backup Garmin Forerunner in the locker room and because of the heat I was not willing to return the 300m to the dock, run up the hill to the club house, get the Garmin, and start the training again. So I decided to risk it. If the SpeedCoach would die, I would use counting strokes to roughly measure out the distances and still complete the training.

I guess it was hot. Perhaps I already told you above, but it was hot. I decided that going out at 350W for the 250m would be a good idea, then reduce to 325W for the 500m, row the 750s and the 1k at 300W, and then back up again.

Doing the first two intervals basically fried me. I had to almost come to a full stop during the 500m to avoid a collision with a pedalo that suddenly changed course. During the 750, the 1k, the second 750, I just went with whatever I could produce at roughly 30spm. Mind you, I did monitor form and boat run. It wasn’t an all sloppy affair. It was just that the engine was very inefficient due to my overheated body. After each interval I collapsed, put my hands in the lake to cool down, wetted my hat with lake water, drank some water, and tried to do the rest paddle as slowly as possible to get back some energy to do the next interval. All that surrounded by the sounds of screaming children and rowing through the thick smell of grilled sausages and other barbecue going on at the lake shore.

In the final 500m I tried to hold 300W and failed. In the final 250m I did manage to hold something between 330W and 350W with decent form.

Decent values for finish angle and wash show that I did keep form relatively well

Drive length and effective drive length show that my form didn’t disappear

I tried to row at 600J per stroke but I collapsed to something in the 500-550J range

Crashing on power and average drive force in the third interval

Not happy with the result, but not unhappy either. The circumstances were bloody hellish, and I didn’t handle down. Tomorrow, I will be able to go out first thing early morning. That should be better. Tomorrow is expected to become the hottest day of this summer, with maximum temperatures between 34 and 38 degrees (in the shadow) for Brno.